


Pictures

by Welfycat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: angst_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welfycat/pseuds/Welfycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of Atlantis, Rodney is left without even himself. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pictures

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Angst Bingo; Prompt: Ennui  
> Content Notes: mentions of death of major characters, mental and physical injury

It was like this, since they'd made it back to the SGC. Usually he didn't have any trouble entertaining himself, especially if there was a computer at hand, or a pencil and paper if he was desperate. The constant swirl of equations and formulas had always been a comfort, a reprieve. And now it was gone.

Rodney was still as smart as he ever was, even more intelligent, he would say, after all he'd seen and learned over the past few years. But now, left with a battered body that he could barely control and a lot of spare time as he lay in a private room by the infirmary, there didn't seem to be any calling to do anything. Nothing he could do to save the day, the day had already been lost a long time ago. Nothing he could do to keep his friends and teammates, and everyone on Atlantis safe; they were all either dead, or running around in a useless attempt to take another run at the Wraith.

They talked about transferring him to another facility, somewhere that could provide better treatment and a more 'healing atmosphere'. Rodney would have told them that this was beyond stupid, the SGC was the best place for him to be treated if anything could treat him at all, but speaking had been beyond him for a while now. He hadn't spoken since they'd stumbled through the 'gate, back into the SGC, disaster still echoing in their ears as Atlantis was destroyed.

He should have stayed, shouldn't have let Zelenka take the last working station, or let Carson go down to the Control Chair. It should have been him and John who stayed behind. More than anyone, Atlantis was theirs. Atlantis had responded to them.

And, even though his body was healing, the broken bones slowly knitting back together, multiple surgeries taken care of everything inside that had been torn and broken, there was nothing left that Rodney could do.

He counted the minutes, counted the tiles in the ceiling, the tiles on the floors, the tiny little specks in the ceiling that he imagined were stars. He didn't let himself cheat and multiple to find out how many there were. And every day he started over from the number one. This was the only math that interested him anymore.

Sam had come by, more than once, holding laptops with enticing data; wormhole research, adjusted calculations on ZPM recharging, stable energy generation. Rodney just rolled his head on the pillow and made it so that Sam's voice was a simple melody of up and down, questions punctuating the rhythm of her speech with a high pitch every so often. As time passed, she came by less and less often; Rodney had kept careful track of the days when they decreased his medication to the point where he could think a little bit again.

John still showed up in the room at regular intervals, every two days at the same time of day, almost to the minute. He didn't speak, not after the first four times. He just sat on a chair next to Rodney's bed and watched, and waited. He stayed an entire hour each time, the same internal clock that kept Rodney alive from second to second apparently functioning in John's head as well. Maybe their clocks were the only things that were functioning anymore. Even though John was up and moving about, the scars around his neck slowly fading into his skin, John didn't seem like he was any better off than Rodney was.

Rodney closed his eyes and let the time slip by, almost certain that he could hear the tick of an analog clock slowly moving. He couldn't imagine doing anything now. He couldn't imagine wanting to do anything. There was simply nothing left to do.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway and Rodney absorbed the vibrations, feeling the click of military shoes somewhere deep within his bones. Military dress shoes, not boots. Not the sound of someone who was off-world, or on Atlantis.

When the vibrations had stopped, except for a slow in and out that meant someone breathing, Rodney opened his eyes. General O'Neill was standing, his eyes fixed somewhere off in the distance, maybe the same place that Rodney looked to when he stared like that. If Rodney still had the energy to wonder, he would have wondered what the General saw when he looked far away, if he saw his friends and his people dying in a fiery blaze that he could do nothing to stop.

General O'Neill spoke, but it wasn't in words, it was in pictures. Pictures of loss and hardship and fighting for everything that was left. Rodney breathed in and out as he heard the pictures; a stray thought, the first one in weeks, wondering if he could ever make pictures again.


End file.
